I am a knowledge worker. Which is to say, I spend most days wiggling "bony protrusions coming off the ends of my arms over a grid of plastic-covered springs to make numbers and letters appear on a light panel aimed at my eyes."
Most weekdays, before I start making numbers and letters appear on a screen, I ride the train. Earlier this week on the Blue Line, I sat on train #3412. Each 3200-series car holds about three dozen people.
Similar to the rituals at McDonald's, for these three dozen or so people sitting on the train, we agree to a "temporary subordination of individual differences in a social and cultural collectivity."
That's the kind of sentence I could think about for a whole month. I read it in a book chapter called "Power, Technology and the Phenomenology of Conventions: On Being Allergic to Onions" by Susan Leigh Star, and it made me want to keep reading Star's work. So I followed it up with her "Reflections on the Origin of a Concept" and came across yet another quote I could think about for a month. She describes her original scholarly desire as to understand "the nature of cooperative work in the absence of consensus."
Which brings me back to train car #3412 on the Blue Line this week. About three dozen other people sat on the same train car, all of whom are, to some extent, temporarily subordinating their individual differences. We travel in the same direction, but we do not share a final destination. "All passengers must leave the train."
The social norm is to avoid looking at other people on the train, but I always look around. This little metal room weighs about 55,000 pounds and travels around 60 miles per hour -- forgive me for breaking social conventions, but I need a glimpse of my fellow passengers.
We go above ground for three stops -- California, Western, Damen -- before going underground for four miles. Approximately 72,000 of us make this journey every weekday, entrusting the CTA to move us underground for miles on end.
When we step off the train, we all walk to different places. Even on the train, though we move in the same direction, we sit in different seats. Although I did see a happy couple recently try to sit on the same little backward-facing seat on a 7000-series train the other day.
Do you prefer center-facing seats, moving left to right or right to left? Or do you prefer facing forward, or facing backward? I have avoided sitting backward for months, and when I finally tried it earlier this week, it... wasn't that bad at all.
The direction of motion, though sometimes shared ("social and cultural collectivity"), is always relative and arbitrary and temporary. I am only "moving forward" from my own point of view. If someone was watching from outside the train, who knows what is the relative direction of movement? Much less if the person is watching from earth orbit or moon orbit... ("You can’t imagine what consternation your tuna fish question has raised...")
Even from my own point of view, I am not moving perfectly forward, although the seat faces that direction. There are bumps that move me up and down, and wobbles that move me left and right, to and fro. There is no such thing as a perfectly straight line.
As of April 2026, I have taken the train to work for about two semesters. Sixteen weeks each semester. Going in to the office four days per week, I get to ride the train about eight times any given week.
Eight rides per week, 32 weeks, and about 30 minutes on the train each ride makes for about 7680 minutes, or 128 hours. These are 128 hours of my life which has been ordered by the CTA. The number grows when accounting for the waiting times, walking times, and various other rides I take on CTA buses and trains.
Like McDonald's, the CTA "shares sovereignty with other enterprises which seek to order lives, and of coexisting principles of order which in fact stratify human life." Some passengers sit while others stand. Some face forward, some face backward, some face "the center." Some sit on 7000-series cars, with carpet-like seat backs, video screens, and improved air circulation.
In the Fall, I saw lots of people reading books on the train. These days, it seems like most people are back to earbuds and touch screens.
Again, forgive me for breaking social conventions. I know I am supposed to sit (or stand) and stare vaguely at the floor or look at an advertisement for a new weight loss drug or gambling website.
But my mind is occupied with other matters: How does the CTA move 70,000 people back and forth on this underground track every day using giant metal boxes? How have we subordinated so many individual differences and created a collectivity that moves us in the same direction for miles on end, even though we all have a different final destination?
I must look around to see which of my fellow passengers realize the profundity of our journey.